


Garland for Queens, may be

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, F/M, Hair Washing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Jed sees Mary in a new light.





	

She would have expected privacy where she sat and it was only a trick of the architecture and how he stood at the window, abstracted at first, that allowed him to see her. Mary was at the far end of the back veranda, a corner that had a dull prospect over the larger half of the kitchen garden and some outbuildings which had not been painted since well before the War; it had nothing to recommend it which must be why she had chosen it. Mansion House had not been so busy the past few days which had been first only a blessing but now there was a growing sense of unease, as if collectively they waited for a storm, aware the way animals were that something dreadful was nearly upon them. The patients in their beds were fractious and sullen and even the nuns seemed to take longer at their prayers, as if they found more and more sin to confess, Compline bleeding into Lauds. The littlest one, Sister Mary Isabella, had burst into tears three times in the past day, wordless but not at all quiet. Jed could not blame Mary for wishing to escape and gave her credit for the cleverness of picking a place no one ever wanted to go as her refuge. He could not blame her for anything at all, but he had a hearty measure of blame for himself for his reaction to seeing her combing out her freshly washed hair. 

It had been her rhythmic motion of drawing the comb through the unbound waves that had broken him from the aimless reverie he’d been lost in, some memory of the bay or a half-remembered dream, a few words in French “ _mon minou, mon loulou_ ,” teasing him, a strange admixture of Camille’s tone but Mary’s voice. It had been like breaching the surface of the water when he swam, that first, hungry gasp of air, to see her so informal, though her cuffs were still tight at her wrists, her skirts covering the hems of her petticoats. The sun was strong, even later in the day, and her chestnut hair was rich with copper and bronze, darker at the crown where it was still damp, curling at the ends, reaching down to her waist. He was David watching Bathsheba, she was Susanna and he a lascivious elder, he was Actaeon seeking Diana in the thicket… every paradigm was terrible yet he couldn’t look away and he couldn’t subdue the sudden desire that choked him as tightly as a fist around his throat. None of the courtesans in Paris had ever drawn such a response from him, it had taken hours to quell his misgivings enough to raise his ardor and he thought only the thickness of his pocketbook had encouraged Mireille and Camille to continue. Even then, he had not been able to stop thinking as they touched him and he pulled their smooth bodies to him in return. 

Regarding Mary, he felt he could not form a thought at all, was compelled and transfixed by the strongest carnal urge he’d ever had for a woman, and yet…He wouldn’t have wanted only to take her, to feel that hair wrapped around his wrist, to put his mouth on hers, her breast, the enticing crease at her thigh; he couldn’t have stroked her, anywhere, without looking first to see that she was not only willing but eager, without murmuring something tender in her ear, something that fit her, nothing frivolous or decadent but simple, honest, “dearest” or “sweet,” waiting for her to arch into him and exhale his name _Jedediah_ only so she might say it again with her next, bewitched, indrawn breath _Jedediah, oh my Jedediah_. He wanted her to put her hands on his face, to bring him to her, to shake her loosened hair around them both, the fragrance of the rosewater in the rinse fading and only the scent of her warm skin, her sweat limning her throat and rising from the underside of her breasts, resting around her hairline like a ribbon, filling his mouth, his lungs, replacing the restive air. The fantasy she inspired was a thousand times more intimate than the actual casually proficient love-making of his Parisian sabbatical, any coupling he’d ever had with Eliza, and he wanted it, subtle, lovely Mary, he wanted to belong to her. He wanted to be able to tell her about his vision and hear her laugh softly, to make some practical, intelligent remark about the difficulties of her unbraided hair, how it would tangle around them, and then for her to swiftly undercut it with her welcoming body, some forthright expression of her own affectionate lust for him, open and unashamed, proud even to rouse him so. That duality, how she contained herself, principled and moral, and how she overwhelmed—her own boundaries, his expectations, what society allowed, the tension that made her Mary he saw now in her chestnut hair, Russian gold in the afternoon light, strands ready to blow about in any breeze and the firmly delicate curve of her cheek, the line of her nose, the precise fringe of her dark lashes and that slender white hand with its comb, balancing the two aspects with its steady movements until he noticed she had stopped. Her hand lay in her lap and she sat quietly, looking out over the property or gazing without to see within; he couldn’t say. But he couldn’t risk her notice and he didn’t want to disturb whatever small peace she’d found within the day. He couldn’t tell her everything and he didn’t wish to tell her only something, more awkward in the curtailing of his desire than a whole expression could ever be. He turned from the window so that all she might see was his figure and walked back into the heart of the hospital, to blood and its resolute rush, copper and iron anchors to the bodies he was allowed to touch.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a sort of drabble+ about Jed getting hot and bothered watching Mary deal with her unbound, freshly washed hair, yet another romantic trope. Russian gold is an alloy of gold and copper. The French words are terms of endearment for men only. Compline and Lauds are two of the official regular prayers of the Catholic Church, Compline at night and Lauds in the morning.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
